


Longest Winter, The

by westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s02e06 The Lame Duck Congress, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-06
Updated: 2007-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-30 17:52:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15101894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist/pseuds/westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist
Summary: 3,000 miles away...





	Longest Winter, The

**Author's Note:**

> A copy of this work was once archived at National Library, a part of the [ West Wing Fanfiction Central](https://fanlore.org/wiki/West_Wing_Fanfiction_Central), a West Wing fanfiction archive. More information about the Open Doors approved archive move can be found in the [announcement post](http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8325).

  
Author's notes: This is my first story EVER. I'd love to hear some feedback...especially the good stuff, if there is any!  


* * *

Every Friday she takes off work early to go grocery shopping.

Early, however, is a relative term, and she takes off early so that she can make it before they close.

She walks the aisles slowly, always engaged in a quiet reverie, the kind that only comes at Albertson’s at 11:00 o’clock on a Friday night. She has learned to studiously ignore the faint looks of recognizance on the faces of those she passes. The looks are quickly hidden anyway, because this is DC and in DC gawking at political figures is like spilling a martini on Jennifer Aniston in LA. It’s just not done.

She thinks about him as she walks out with her plastic bags, the frigid December air nipping at her toes, insulated though they are inside her shoes. She thinks about the December before, the Christmas before, the night before Christmas.

She eyes the phone as she puts away the groceries. He had left a phone number when he had left DC. He had also told her that he would never call her first. It was up to her.

She curses him everyday.

She curses him after putting away the groceries because she picks up the phone and dials the number.

And she smiles when she hears his voice. She smiles for the first time since he left, six weeks ago.

She sits with tin-roof sundae ice cream as she watches snow start to fall outside the window and quiet tears escape from her eyes, smile still on her face, as she lets him talk.

After a while, she tells him that her apartment during grad school had a view of the Bay Bridge, which is commonly mistaken for the Golden Gate Bridge. He tells her he doesn’t know how long he’ll be away. She tells him that tin-roof sundae ice cream is her favorite. He tells her to quit changing the subject.

She does as he requests and lets everything out. She yells, once again asking why he didn’t take the editor’s job, asking why he left, screaming all the different ways they could have been together. She yells at him and tells him in no uncertain terms that she very much wants to be with him.

He smiles for the first time since he left and though she can’t see it she can feel it and she settles down. The tin-roof sundae ice cream is gone but the snow has just truly begun to fall.

***

Every Saturday she takes her niece out to lunch.

Her niece is 16; a sophomore in high school. Her niece knows little of the trials and tribulations of the real world, and for that she is grateful.

She remembers high school. She remembers how it felt to like a boy and not have him like her back.

She thinks now, however, that is preferable to her life in the present. She thinks it is preferable to liking a boy, having the boy like her back, and be a whole country away from him. Especially when the boy could be right there next to her in bed every night.

Boys, she has learned through the course of her life, can be extremely stubborn.

Then again, so can girls.

Her niece purses her lips much like she does, and she wants to tell her niece not to be like her. She wants to tell her niece that being like her won’t get anyone very far. She thinks that without her job she is nothing, though she won’t say it out loud for fear of her concern being validated.

This Saturday lunch is no different than any other Saturday lunch. And this Saturday night is no different than any other Saturday night. In the end, she remains alone.

The shadows of falling snowflakes dance on her comforter and she wraps it tighter around herself, though a comforter is no substitution for the real thing.

As her eyes begin to grow heavy, she thinks about the night before. They’ve never really spoken the words good-bye to each other. She isn’t sure what this means, but she thinks she likes it, and she nestles deeper into the blankets.

***

Every Sunday she paints her toenails.

She paints them bright red, taking pleasure in knowing that no one else will see them. But she’ll know. She always does. She knows that in the neutral-tone shoes lie candy apple red toenails. It’s her independent streak.

She’s always been an independent one, though there’s little room for something as frivolous as independence when you serve at the pleasure of the president. The man she wants to call seems to enjoy her independent nature.

She wonders what he would think about her toenails. She wonders what he would think about many things more than just that, what he would think if he knew her innermost thoughts.

She wonders what he would think if he knew just how much she wanted him.

She wonders if it would have made a difference if he would have taken the editor’s job. He would still be working for a newspaper and she would still be working with the press. The conflict would still be there.

Deep inside, though, she knows there would have been more acceptance. He wouldn’t have been the one out there every day, breaking stories; he wouldn’t be chasing tips people would assume had come from her. But what has passed has passed and there is nothing to change it now.

That doesn’t stop her, however, from picking up the phone when it rings. 

She can’t stop the smile on her face or the pink in her cheeks or the butterflies in her stomach. She can never believe what he does to her. She bites the corner of her lip in an unconscious attempt to tamp down the smile.

She fails. Horribly.

She closes the curtains on the falling snow and she slides between the sheets of her bed. She turns off her lamp, drenching the room in darkness, and she requests one thing of him.

She asks him to talk until she falls asleep. 

He tells her he’d rather do it in person – but that he wouldn’t deny her wish. He tells her the tails of winter where it doesn’t drop below 50 and he keeps talking even after he hears the deep, even breaths of sleep.

He tells her then that he misses her.

***

Every Monday she sings “The Jackal” on her way to work.

Loud and uninhibited, it gets her in the mood for having to deal with a cranky press corps.

This Monday, however, she wakes up in a mood unlike most other Mondays. This Monday she wakes up happy. Everyone this morning gets a chipper greeting, a little joke, or in the case of her assistant, a cup of their favorite Starbucks beverage.

Senior staff is a breeze – mostly because she isn’t paying much attention – and she spends a good deal of time pricing plane tickets. She knows she can’t take the time off, but the thought makes her happy and her briefing is painless.

It isn’t until she gets home that she remembers why she ever felt bad in the first place. Her apartment is void of activity and, most of all, void of what had been in her head all day – him.

Suddenly she wants to hear his voice but can’t justify calling him; she feels irrational, over-reactive, and like she is in 9th grade all over again. To call or not to call…? Wait for him to call…?

She cuts a tomato and wiggles her toes and notes to herself that they match. A slice matches a sigh and she knows she’ll call. She sets down the knife and punches the buttons and she taps her fingers as she waits.

She gets no answer and leaves a fumbling message; she hangs up and amends a previous thought. It isn’t 9th grade all over again. It’s 7th grade. 

The snow is falling heavier than ever and she wishes he could see it. Winter was always his favorite time of the year. That simple thought accompanies her to sleep.

***

Every Tuesday she forgoes a little sleep to take a bubble bath.

Her legs don’t quite fit in the tub but she tries. Knees and vibrant red toes show above the bubbles. The bubbles get kicked away quickly when the phone rings and she won’t remember later how she didn’t slip as she launched herself out of the bathtub. Sopping wet without a towel and slightly out of breath she answers the phone to a disappointment.

Wrong number.

She resignedly returns to her bathroom out of the mood for a bath. She pulls the stopper out of the drain, wraps herself in a towel, and flops herself on her bed.

The phone rings again. This time it’s him.

She smiles as they banter like they used to and she thinks it worth missing a bubble bath. Her apartment seems a little less lonely, though she knows it to be only a temporary salvation. She falters at the thought.

She wonders if he’s as lonely as she is. She wonders if he’s ever coming back. Talking to him, while pleasant for the time it goes on, ends up only hurting her more, knowing he isn’t there for more.

But she also knows he can’t be there for more.

And with that thought, she politely ends the conversation, dresses, and goes to bed. Sleep, however, is a long time coming. She sighs and allows three tears, nothing more; too afraid to realize how deep into it she is she forces the tears to stop.

Sleep is still a long time coming.

***

Every Wednesday she drinks a Corona. 

Wednesday is her least favorite day of the week. The memories of the last weekend are faint and the next weekend is so far away. Weekends were only weekends because they generally didn’t require interaction with the press. There are no assistants around the west wing on weekends. They are encouraged to have lives.

She tries to remember the last time she had a life. She grimaces at the answer. Work had become her life somewhere along the way. 

A cold December night one long winter ago had been the last time she felt any semblance of normalcy.

She stares out the window at this winter pouring from the skies and she pours another Corona into a glass. Her toes are cold she notices as she wiggles them, and she glances at the phone. Her toenails are crimson and soon her cheeks match as she dials the numbers now familiar to her fingers. She thinks to herself she needs tomatoes and makes a mental note to put it on her list and she wonders why she hasn’t put the number into her phone’s contact list.

He picks up after two rings and she asks him when he’ll stop caring, though she’s not sure she wants to hear the answer.

He tells her he’ll wait all eight years if that’s what it takes. She doesn’t know how to respond. She never does. She’s not quite sure how she feels about broad, romantic gestures when they’re for her. She’s not too sure about people who predict a re-election either, especially when she doesn’t even want to think about it.

She remembers the first time she realized his fixation on her. She compares it whatever this is now. The two are worlds apart, she realizes, and it’s not so simple anymore. It’s not a simple ‘no’ when there’s this much at stake. It’s not a simple ‘no’ when he is no longer the only one on the chopping block. She’s out there too, she realizes, though she can’t remember when it happened.

All she knows is that somewhere along the way it became mutual. She started missing him. She started wishing he was still here, in DC, instead of 3,000 miles west, in a city by the bay where his talents were being underutilized.

Every now and then she stands in the spot where they first kissed, reminiscing. That was almost a year ago and another winter is underway and it just doesn’t feel the same. She misses him a little more everyday, though she shies away from telling him that. She feels pangs of sadness now, talking to him, wondering if she’ll ever have that again, and she sips slowly from her glass.

***

Every Thursday she hits the snooze button. Twice. 

She can’t remember the last time she slept in.

There are a lot of things she can’t remember.

And there are a lot of things she can.

She can remember winter in LA, where the world stopped if the temperature dropped below 50 degrees. She can remember winter in New York, where the sky could dump three feet of snow without the city missing a beat.

Winters in DC are perfect, she decides. The city slows but still lives. She thinks it appropriate as she compares it to herself. Real life has slowed, but still exists. Work life is still as dizzy as ever.

But she is learning to separate the two. She curls her feet under her as she reaches for the phone and her toes, the ones with the vivid red nails, curl along with her lips when she hears his voice.

She says – or rather, admits – to him for the first time that she misses him. He asks her if she would like him to come back. She has no answer for him, afraid of the consequences of the answer; afraid of her own truth. Instead she remarks that she is out of milk and must put it on her list for Friday. He ignores her comment and asks about the weather. She hesitantly whispers a yes, unsure of herself and unsure of the consequences but knowing fully of her truth and fully knowing that, in the end, life is one giant choice. It is time she face hers.

And snowflakes float on gossamer wings as she sets the phone gently back on her nightstand, still never having uttered good-bye.

***

Every Friday she takes off work early to go grocery shopping.

Every Friday she brings her groceries home to a quiet apartment – an empty apartment.

But not this Friday.

This Friday she opens the door to find him sitting on her couch. His luggage is considerable and he smiles at her as she smiles at him.

And with a smile she closes the door behind her, thanking the gods above, the ones that send the winter and the snow and the tin-roof sundae ice cream, for the open door in front of her.


End file.
